Improve Your Instagram Likes, Following & Engagement by @kirstypoole

Below is my instagram grid, its very important for your feed to look cohesive and your profile photo should match your overall theme:

What is your passion?

Post what you love and think about daily - for example I absolutely love drinks (coffee, champagne, smoothies) + travel and I also love taking part in instagram giveaways - and have won some amazing prizes in the past. 

So on my account I post a lot of super cool giveaways. I started with my own beauty and self care giveaway, all provided and sent by me and now I work with various brands who provide the prize and send it out to the winner. I only work with brands I love and use myself. 

During the lockdown I have been focusing more on my instagram and also learning about instagram.

Make sure your bio is clear & concise, State what you offer and include a link to a blog or a website if you have one.

It is always better to post a portrait photo rather than landscape, as it takes up more screen space and grabs attention more easily.

You should also mix it up, so for example: I will do a photo of myself, a photo of a coffee, a giveaway, a travel photo, flowers and so on. It depends on what kind of content you post. But you won't want to post 5 selfies in a row!

You should utilise everything instagram has to offer:

• Feed
• Reels
• Stories
• Live
• IGTV

People are now using instagram to micro blog, with longer more informative captions. If you write a long and informative post and it is something that is helpful/educational then someone might want to save it and return to read it later. Since they now say saves are more important than likes and even comments, when it comes to the Instagram algorithm. You want people to engage with the post and ideally you want to teach them something, giving them value & making a positive impression.

It is also important to plan your posts in advance. I don't personally use scheduling apps, but that is definitely what a lot of people do.

Check out my account:  @kirstypoole

I recently took part in a free Instagram Masterclass with Carla Besieger.

These are some of my notes from the video masterclass I watched.

I suggest you also check it out for yourself & check out Carla's instagram.

Carla's Top Tips

Get your audience to: know, like and trust you

You should aim to: teach, inspire & connect 

Talk to your audience, be on video, show your face, tell stories about yourself, to let your audience know the person behind the photos.

Content creator

Work with brands

Connect with right brands to land sponsored campaigns

1. Connect with dream accounts
2. Triple your engagement  
3. How to get paying clients or brands without feeling sales-y

How to connect with your dream accounts

• Find dream followers who will engage with you
• Dream clients who will pay for your products/services
• Dream brands who want to work with you on sponsored campaigns

Who do my dream brands follow on instagram?

Who do my dream followers follow on instagram?

So for me personally I would look at: travel influencers and the brands that I am hoping to to a giveaway with.

Check the comments on other influencers posts, then check the account of the person who made the comment & if they look like the type of person you want to connect with - add their username to a list.

If you are a travel blogger - who do your dream brands follow?

Find an influencer who is already working with these brands.

And then add them to your list

Find influencers in your niche & make list of 10 dream accounts.

• Engage with these accounts every single day - leave meaningful comments, as it shows you have taken the time to read caption and it resonates with them.

• Put post notifications on, so you can be one of the first people to leave a comment - so they actually see it

3 steps to Triple Engagement 

Why does your engagement matter?

Your engagement = evidence of how true your influence really is

The way to measure true influence is not by the number of likes or followers (since you can buy these, which I do not recommend, as it is so obvious when someone has 10K followers, yet hardly any likes or comments). 

• You can’t buy quality meaningful comments.
• True influence is all about authentic connection.
• Ask more questions. Start with a question, go into detail, repeat question in a difference way.

I recently read this: 

Goodbye likes, hello saves: Instagram saves are the hottest engagement metric that brands are tracking right now (and for good reason). 

With Instagram testing the removal of likes, success metrics for Instagram feed posts are moving away from public likes in favor of the private “saves” metric instead.

Instagram saves are also a key signal for how the Instagram algorithm works: the more saves you get on a post, the more people it will be shown to in the algorithm.

An example of this from my own Instagram, is this post.

The above was one of my most saved posts (apart from giveaway posts), not because it was the best photo in the world, but because it was a simple healthy recipe, that people could save and make later.

On your own account: 

• Tell more stories
• What’s happening in your life/business
• Make yourself relatable
• Use captions & emojis, tell a story about your life to get more comments
• Be more engaged: continue the conversation in your comments
• Reply to comments by asking a question

Don’t get discouraged: If you ask a question and no one answers - you haven’t asked the right question, so keep trying.

List 10 dream accounts & engage with them on a daily basis to get on their radar.

Focus on connection

Next step

1. If you are en Entrepreneur 
2. End goal: get paying clients
3. Turn followers in to leads

1. Content creator
2. End goal - get sponsored campaign
3. Next step: Find out if this dream brand is open yo work with you

Slide into their DM’s

Action 1: @ mention them in your story

Action 2: reply to one of their stories 

• Building relationships takes time
• Don’t give up
• Focus on making a true connection

There are over 1 billion active users on IG

SO you can rinse and repeat the 10 dream account strategy many times with new accounts.

The following information was at the end of the video and it was giving an idea of what you would get/learn if you sign up for the course Carla is offering. 

Instagram Secrets to Success by Carla Biesinger.

• Why you are here today?
• How to use instagram to your advantage 
• Big Dreams
• Big Impact
• Build bigger audience
• Use instagram to make money

Create highly converting impactful profile that turns more visitors into followers.

Drive more traffic to your profile and grow you audience on autopilot, so you spend less time on instagram.

Accelerate your by actively growing your following and engagement - gain 10,000 followers and get the swipe up link.

• Monetise your account - turn followers into paying clients or working with brands.
• Go from being invisible to impactful. 
• Creating impactful and highly converting profile

Find out who your ideal follower is, how to locate them on IG and how to attract them to your feed so you can truly grow faster.

• Create a killer bio that will turn more visitors into followers and drive more traffic to your website.
• Write captions that increase engagement and create true connections.
• Create a beautiful, consistent feed.
• Making instagram work for you.
• Is the business profile right for you?

#Hashtags are still one of the most powerful strategies on instagram to get more engagement and new followers on every single post

1. How to use the algorithm to your advantage
2. Making it onto he explore page
3. Actively growing your following like whoa!
4. Growing organically 
5. Daily tests to increase likes and comments.

Instagram jail - how to get out of it.

I hope you enjoyed my notes from the class - and as I said at the beginning here is the link to the page if you wish to register for the webinar yourself: http://carlabiesinger.easywebinar.live/registration

Check out my account: @kirstypoole

One of my top tips:

Find a hashtag that relates to your content - lets say #wanderlust if you post about travel.

Click on the hashtag and like lots of the photos in recent (the ones with not so many likes, so you will actually get the attention of the person). This often results in them giving you a lot of likes and following you. Although don't do this too much at one time, as instagram has got very strict with likes and comments etc and is regularly blocking people if you like or comment or reply to stories too much, so be cautious. I have been blocked for a week before, which was very frustrating, especially as I hadn't even been doing that much.

For me the best way to grow my account has been to host giveaways. As I said earlier, I have hosted 4 so far, and have several planned over the next couple of months. 

For the first two, I took care of everything (the prize and the shipping etc).

Once I had more followers and engagement from doing these I contacted brands I wanted to work with (usually those with less followers than me) and asked if they would provide the prize, and then I would do all the work and help them gain more followers and get more likes and engagement on their account.

My dream is to host a luxury holiday giveaway, as it combines my love of travel and competitions -so that is something to work towards.

I think I will write a separate post on doing an instagram giveaway. But for now I would recommend checking out How to run an Instagram giveaway by Super Lucky Di Coke’s Competition Blog